You don’t need meat to have a hearty, comforting bowl of chili around here! This vegetable-packed vegan meal is not only super healthy for you, but super tasty as well! You can have your comfort food and eat it too with this Hearty Vegan Vegetable Chili recipe. 

THE INGREDIENTS FOR HEARTY VEGAN VEGETABLE CHILI: 

Yellow Onion: An onion is the base of so many meals, and this Hearty Vegan Vegetable Chili is no exception. Onions, tomatoes, and garlic make a great base for this chili. Although we usually use yellow onions for absolutely everything, feel free to replace this with a white onion, a sweet onion…you could even try a red onion! We do not recommend shallots for this recipe. Their mild flavor cannot stand up to the flavor-packed chili that we have going on here. If you’d rather reach for your spice cabinet, use 1 tablespoon (Yes, you read that right) of onion powder or two tablespoons of dried minced onion in this recipe. You can add the dried minced onion at the same step you would add the fresh garlic. 

Garlic Cloves: Garlic knows how to pack a punch, and that’s exactly what we are looking for here. Chili powder and smoked paprika are BIG flavors in this recipe, so garlic manages to keep up and help balance the wonderful smokiness and heat in this recipe. We personally use 4 medium-to-large garlic cloves, so make sure to up the garlic if your cloves are small! Otherwise, adjust this to your own preference-some people really like their garlic, after all. If you want to reach for your spice cabinet, reach for 1 teaspoon of garlic powder. 

Potatoes: We told you this chili is hearty, and what’s more filling than potatoes? Not much else, in our opinion. Although we like to use russet potatoes in this recipe, feel free to use whatever potato you have on hand. Even sweet potatoes would bring a nice flavor to this recipe. The key is dicing the potatoes into small cubes so that they are able to cook all the way through. No one wants chili with slightly hard potatoes. 2 potatoes already gives a good amount in each bite, especially considering all the other ingredients in this chili, so we don’t recommend increasing the amount. 

Mushrooms: Mushrooms are well known as being a beef substitute due to their meaty texture. Here, their purpose is twofold. One, to make this chili taste and have a mouthfeel just as good (if not better) than its meat-including counterparts. Two, to add more healthy veggies to the mix. Just about any mushroom you have on hand will work in this recipe, but we like to use baby bellas. For a superior texture, our secret is cooking the mushrooms down so their liquid evaporates before continuing with the recipe. By taking away all the moisture from our mushrooms, there is that meaty texture that absolutely knocks this chili recipe out of the ballpark. 

Poblano Peppers: Chili, in our opinion, is meant to have a little kick without being full-on spicy. Just like our favorite way to have chili, the poblano pepper has a little heat, but not too much. In addition to that, just like bell peppers, poblanos are incredibly versatile and go well in many dishes. One way they especially shine is when they are paired with chili powder and tomatoes, just like they are here! If you do not have poblano peppers on hand, green bell peppers or anaheim peppers are what we would reach for. Anaheim peppers, like poblanos, have a touch of heat without being overwhelming. For bell peppers, we prefer green as they are less sweet-and brown sugar already sweetens up this recipe. If you are worried about the spice level of this chili, you can deseed whatever pepper you decide to use. 

Jalapeno: You know how we said we like a little heat in our chili? Well, since we use mild chili powder, the poblanos alone in this recipe don’t get us where we want to be. In comes the hottest ingredient in this recipe (but still not too hot, really): the jalapeno! Feel free to add another jalapeno if you want more heat. You can even deseed the jalapeno or get rid of it entirely to decrease the heat. This ingredient is totally adjustable to your preference. 

Canned Cannellini Beans: With so many beans out there, it is kind of hard to settle on just two. With that being said, we’ve done that for you here. According to this wonderful chili bean guide, kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans, great northern beans, and cannellini beans are contenders. So, if you don’t have canned cannellini beans, feel free to reach for any of the beans listed above. One note that this guide touches on that we will reiterate here is that pinto beans break down in chili if overcooked. It’s better to add them a little later on in this recipe to be on the safe side (if you decide to use them as a replacement, that is).

We use cannellini beans because we wanted all of the beans to be similar in texture, size, and hearty flavor. It makes sense, then, that cannellini beans are also called white kidney beans! However, we didn’t want to just pick one bean! So, these cannellini beans add more variety to our Hearty Vegan Vegetable Chili, helping us make sure that this meal doesn’t involve having the word “monotonous” come to mind! Different colors of beans really help to make this chili look good enough to eat. We use canned beans for ease and to take hours of waiting off this recipe. Feel free to use dried beans if that is what you have on hand. Just make sure you have soaked them for the time listed on their packaging (or maybe even a touch longer)-no one likes hard beans. 

Canned Red Kidney Beans: Now here’s the bean that you were probably expecting! Kidney beans find themselves in chili so often that you might even just call them “chili beans”. They’re hearty, a beautiful shade of red, and delicious. Although we use plain red kidney beans, if you have the pre-seasoned variety, there’s no reason you can’t use them here. In early iterations of this recipe, we only used 1 can of cannellini beans. However, there just weren’t enough beans to classify our meal as a chili-and we’re not trying to make vegetable soup here. So, although two cans of beans may seem like a lot, we recommend using both. If you don’t have red kidney beans on hand, reach for more cannellini beans, pinto beans, great northern beans, or black beans. 

Canned Tomatoes: You can’t have chili without some tomato flavor! We’ve used tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and crushed tomatoes all in search of the best canned tomato product to put in our chili. The verdict? Crushed tomatoes! With that being said, if tomato sauce or diced tomatoes is what you have on hand, feel free to substitute. We find that crushed tomatoes give the best of both worlds-it’s thicker than canned tomato sauce, but still spreads evenly throughout the chili instead of giving us tomato chunks to find. This helps to make more of that gravy-like texture that chili is known for. This recipe is versatile, so if you don’t have 28 ounces of crushed tomatoes, don’t sweat it-use what you have. 

Water: Doesn’t water weaken the flavor of this chili? Shouldn’t we use vegetable stock? Honestly, no! We have made this chili an embarrassing number of times (we’re talking months of attempts here…) and in an embarrassing number of different ways to get it just right. One time, we had no vegetable stock on hand, so we prepared for blandness and added water. Nope! Water VS Vegetable Stock actually has no big impact on flavor, who knew? There are already so many spices and a lot of strong tomato flavor that any help your vegetable stock might bring really gets overshadowed. That being said, if you have vegetable stock on hand to use up, go ahead. It won’t hurt this chili, that’s for sure! 

Vegetable Oil: Simply put, the vegetable oil helps us to cook down our onion and garlic. It also helps to bring out their flavor, which is a big part of this Hearty Vegan Vegetable Chili. Feel free to replace this with any neutral oil you have on hand. Otherwise, butter (plant-based or not) is a good way to go. 

Salt: When you think about what percentage of this chili is salt by weight, it’s probably something like 0.01% or even less. Yet, you definitely would miss it if it weren’t there! No matter how much flavor we add to this chili, it will always taste lackluster if there isn’t enough salt. We believe that the salt is at a perfect amount for this recipe, but adjust it to your needs. Everybody has different tastes! 

Black Pepper: We usually say that we add black pepper for zing in our recipes, but this Hearty Vegan Vegetable Chili already has lots of sources of that! However, black pepper melds with everything else to give this chili the distinct flavor that we love. It’s not too peppery, yet we think you would miss it if it weren’t there. As always, adjust to your preference. There’s no wrong answer here. 

Chili Powder: Now here’s something important! What would chili be like without chili powder? Sad, probably. We like to use mild chili powder as it gets the flavor across without turning this chili into fire alarm chili. However, if you have a higher heat tolerance, feel free to replace this with whatever chili powder blend works for you. We believe 1 tsp is already a good amount for this recipe and do not recommend decreasing it beyond that point. However, bearing in mind it will make your chili a little hotter, you can increase it as desired. 

Smoked Paprika: Just because “chili” is in the name doesn’t mean that chili powder has to be the only main seasoning. Smoked paprika is like chili powder without the heat, but with all the smokiness. When you combine this flavor with a nice bite of mushroom, it almost feels like you are eating meat. To not have an overwhelming amount of smokiness in the recipe, we don’t recommend increasing it. However, you can decrease it to your preference if you aren’t a smoked paprika fan. A good substitute is to add a little bit more chili powder and regular paprika. If you’re daring, you can add a drop of liquid smoke as a substitute, but that’s well-known for being quite noticeable. 

Oregano: What is an herb doing in this chili recipe?! Balancing out the flavor, that’s what! Oregano adds some floral notes and tastes so good with this chili due its ability to pair well with tomatoes, onion, and garlic. Italian seasoning, which you might find in your Italian pasta sauce, usually has oregano in it, after all. If it can work in that tomato-based dish, it definitely can work here! As always, adjust it to your preference. 

Brown Sugar: We know what you’re thinking. “Oh, I’ll be a little healthier today and skip the sugar”. STOP IN YOUR TRACKS! Although we’ve all done that before and, yes, you can do what you want, let us plead our case. Tomatoes are acidic, our seasonings and peppers have a bit of a kick, so what’s missing? Some sweetness! Sugar helps to make tomatoes not taste so sharp and helps to reduce the heat, besides the fact that sugar also adds a delicious flavor. Baked beans, for example, really highlight how sugar makes beans taste delicious. So, if you can see the value of sugar in baked beans, you’ll probably enjoy the flavor of our chili more if it has the sugar that we recommend adding in it. Case officially pleaded. 

KEY INFORMATION: 

Why Do We Cook the Onions First, Then the Mushrooms, Then Everything Else? 

Like usual, there is a method behind our madness. Onions are at their best flavor when they are cooked in fat, just like we are doing with our vegetable oil. If we were to add the mushrooms before the onions were done cooking, all of the liquid that the mushrooms would release while they cook would essentially “boil” our diced onions-and you can guess how flavorful boiled onions are compared to those that are pan-fried. Next, if we were to cook the mushrooms through simmering, like we do with the other vegetables (potatoes, poblanos), their texture and flavor would not be nearly as ideal. To get that super meaty texture, mushrooms need a chance to sweat off all of their liquid, which they can’t do while they are simmering in even more liquid. 

How Can I Adjust the Heat Level of this Hearty Vegan Vegetable Chili Recipe? Heat level is tricky because what is way too hot for one person is undetectable for another. However, if you want to increase the heat, we recommend these steps: keeping the seeds in your poblanos and jalapeno, increasing the number of jalapenos in this recipe, using hot chili powder instead of mild, increasing the amount of chili powder in this recipe, using hot smoked paprika, or using spicy chili-seasoned kidney beans (sometimes called “canned chili beans”). 

Now what if your goal is to make this “not-fire-alarm-at-all” chili? Here are some ideas: deseed your poblanos and jalapeno, replace the poblano peppers with green bell peppers, or omit the jalapeno altogether. 

Should You Rinse Canned Beans When Making Chili? This is a debate for sure! The liquid that comes with the canned beans is starchy and can thicken your chili, but we believe it comes at a cost. Canned goods, especially beans, can have that “canned” flavor. To get rid of it, we like to rinse our beans off. We believe that if you were to add the liquid to this chili recipe, you would get a thicker chili but the flavor would not be as good. If the chili is not thick enough for your liking, we recommend adding a cornstarch slurry instead (try 1 tbsp of cornstarch in 2 tbsp of water). 

What is Simmering? Simmering is that point where you are just below a boil. Bubbles are coming to the surface, but not rapidly. We recommend bringing the chili to a boil first and then reducing the heat so that the bubbles are not coming to the surface as rapidly because it allows you to get to the simmering stage faster, which means this chili gets to your dinner table faster. 

What are Good Substitutions in this Hearty Vegan Vegetable Chili Recipe? It happens: you find yourself with vegetables to use up, but don’t know what to do. You were looking in your pantry and found some items near expiration. There are some goods in the fridge, yet there are no plans to make the goods into a good meal. That’s why Cook Your Pantry Out is here! This chili is incredibly versatile, so let us help you out. 

Vegetables: Eggplant, Beets, Carrots, Corn, Green Beans, Leeks, Pumpkin, Winter Squash, Sweet Potato, Zucchini/Yellow Squash. Add these as additional vegetables or replace their closest counterpart in our recipe. 

Pantry Goods: Canned vegetables, canned beans (black, kidney, cannellini, pinto, great northern), canned macaroni or small pasta (for chili mac). The pasta can easily replace potatoes as a carb in this recipe if you’re more of a chili mac person instead of a chili person. You could even try adding a little pumpkin puree for an autumnal chili! 

Goods in the Fridge: Tofu, meat (sorry, not vegan anymore) (cook before adding to simmer), or leftover tomato sauce (whether pasta sauce or tomato salsa, anything tomato-based can be thrown in here). Don’t be afraid to repurpose your leftovers! 

What Goes with This Recipe? A variety of different toppings and sides, of course! For toppings, good choices are sour cream, sliced green onions, cheddar cheese, croutons, or crackers. Whether you’re having a Game Day/Super Bowl Party or just a family dinner, what pairs well with this recipe is: baked potatoes (baked potato bar), plant or meat based hot dogs (chili dogs), cornbread, cornmeal bread (involving yeast, such as cornmeal rolls), any bread (especially garlic bread!), a dip-heavy charcuterie spread (hello spinach dip, queso dip, and buffalo chicken dip), grilled cheese and deli sandwiches for our soup and sandwich people, or salads for our healthy soup and salad people.